This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

They’re craving works released during that period, current pieces written in the style of that period — even diaries of kitchen maids who simply mopped the floors and peeled potatoes during that period.

“We expect a huge interest simply because of the show — it’s wonderful,” says Michelle Blackwell, marketing associate for Simon & Schuster, Canada. “People just can’t get enough of it, so now they’re turning to books for more.”

If this is the first you have heard of the series (which won a Golden Globe award for best miniseries) — it won’t be the last.

Article Continued Below

The craze started in England with the show’s debut two years ago with the first season finally hitting North America at the start of 2011.

The long awaited second season kicked off in Canada and the U.S. earlier this month with some 4.2 million viewers tuning into its Sunday night PBS slot.

It’s a saga centred on a fictional British family of nobility featuring servants, beautiful costumes, sibling rivalries, skullduggery, drama and, of course, sex.

It’s Upstairs, Downstairs (an earlier British TV series) on steroids, or Viagra, according to some.

“It’s captivating,” says Blackwell, a fan of period pieces. “I’ve cut short phone calls to get back to the TV. It’s a perfect blend of a good historical literary story and guilty pleasure.”

She knew the show opened an opportunity for the written word and immediately entered into her blog, simonreads.ca, titles from the firm’s catalogue that were of a similar genre to the show.

The firm has no original titles available from that era but features a number of modern writers, such as England’s Kate Morton, who Blackwell says stays in tune with the spirit of the style.

Article Continued Below

One title she suggests is Morton’s The Forgotten Garden where a tiny girl is abandoned on a ship headed for Australia in 1913. She arrives alone with nothing but a small suitcase containing a few clothes and a single book — a beautiful volume of fairy tales.

She says book stores are being issued a bulletin regarding the Downton Abbey phenomenon so shelves should be filled — and emptied — soon.

Other authors of interest who have written in the style of the TV show are Kimberley Freeman (Wildflower Hill) or Kate Mosse (Labyrinth).

“The show is fascinating,” says Toronto graphic artist Hans Pellikaan, who will be scouring book stores for works from that period. “I’m a history buff and watching (the program) really draws you in.”

He says watching a show like Downton Abbey opens a door, peaks curiosity and makes one want to pursue more information.

Rob Firing, director of publicity and communications for HarperCollins Canada, says his company is also set to ride the “huge, huge” Downton Abbey wave and will be distributing early works by the late British author Margaret Powell which are being published by Pan MacMillan in England.

He says the two books Below Stairs and Climbing the Stairs are the “real deal” as Powell worked as a kitchen maid in the great houses of 1920s Britain.

“They’re fascinating reads,” says Firing. “Exactly the stuff that something like Downton Abbey would be based on.”

University of Toronto English professor Melba Cuddy-Keane has been watching the show faithfully since it started in Canada and says she believes it’s popularity is based — due to it being a serial — on the fact viewers can savour the slow evolution of a family.

“We’re curious of what happens . . . the rise and fall of men and women,” she says. “There’s time to include the mundane parts of life — but it’s all interesting.”

She says all of that — combined with the cultural change of Europe at that time — make it an intriguing show.

She says readers who want literature that was actually written during that period — but also includes the sensibilities of Downton Abbey — to check out The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy (which was also made into a hugely successful British TV series and first aired in 1967), many works by British author Arnold Bennett and Canada’s own Jalna written by Mazo De la Roche, a series about an aristocratic family named Whiteoak that lived “somewhere” in southern Ontario.

Other books on the period that are in demand include the ever popular Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, Parade’s End by Ford Madox Ford, The Decline and Fall ofthe British Aristocracy by David Cannadine, Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford, a 1949 novel about the English upper class, and almost anything about the sinking of the Titanic which marks its 100th somber anniversary on April 10 of this year.

More from The Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com